


Cross-training

by inlovewithnight



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-11-08
Updated: 2006-11-08
Packaged: 2017-10-15 21:41:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/165203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Post-ep for "Torn"</p>
    </blockquote>





	Cross-training

**Author's Note:**

> Post-ep for "Torn"

"You want me to spot you?"

Lee stares up from the bench at Helo, standing over him and smiling so pleasantly, like it's just an innocent question. "No, thanks."

"Supposed to have a spotter." Helo runs one finger along the bar, around the rim of the ridiculously light weights. He could lift this without even flexing, Lee thinks, and feels another burst of heat rise shamefully under his skin. Gods, he hates this. Hates that Helo's here. Hates that's _he's_ here. "That's pretty basic, sir. Not safe to lift by yourself."

"Not safe to jump a battlestar into atmo, either," Lee points out, not bothering to protest or sigh as Helo moves around to the head of the bench and cups his hands under the bar, spotting whether Lee wants it or not. This isn't new. Helo always does that, lets the other person bluster and mumble and rant and rave, while he nods and smiles and shrugs and does exactly what he was planning to do anyway. It used to drive Lee crazy.

He sort of counts on it, now, after this past year. No, sixteen months. Frak, where has the time gone?

"Deep breath, Commander," Helo says. "And go."

"Major," Lee corrects on the exhale, lifting the bar.

Helo raises an eyebrow. "Hadn't heard that."

And the XO hears _everything_. Lee hides a smile at the flash of irritation in Helo's eyes, both because it's nice to see Helo show emotion like a normal person, and because he has to concentrate on the next lift. "Not official yet. But he has to. No choice. No _ship._ Can't be a Commander without something to command, right?"

"That's five," Helo says, and Lee grits his teeth and lifts again. "Okay, going for reps of ten, then."

"Thanks for remembering, though," Lee mutters.

"Remembering what?"

"That I _was_ ," and he really should have stuck with reps of five, "a frakking Commander."

"Saved our asses." Helo catches the bar at eight and settles it back on the rack. "Sets of eight is good."

"I'll do ten," Lee says, glaring up at the ceiling past Helo's upside-down face.

"Then you won't be able to move your arms tomorrow," is the matter-of-fact reply. "Gotta build the foundation before the house, sir."

"Frak you, Agathon."

"You'll have to talk to Sharon, sir." Helo grins down at him and Lee can't help but smile back. "Come on. Go again. Let's shoot for three sets, okay?"  
***  
Another week melts by, full of refugee issues and re-activating the members of the Fleet who went planetside and running two crews on the same ship. Lee's frakking grateful for his trips to the gym, because that's the only time that's _his_. He and Dee fall asleep every night mumbling to each other about reassigning pilots and support crew.

The Admiral took his rank pins in their morning meeting, with an apologetic speech about field promotions. Lee shrugged and shuffled his feet and took the first opportunity to run like hell.

"I mean, I lost my ship, right?" he pants, stepping back from the bag and wiping his arm across his forehead. "Put her on a frakking suicide run. Killed her."

"Saved the rest of us," Helo says, swatting at the bag so it spins idly from its chain. "People _do_ remember that, sir."

Lee makes a face and reaches for his water bottle. "No, they don't. And don't call me 'sir' down here, okay?"

"Okay, Adama." Helo grins and swats the bag again. "Or Apollo, still? Can't call you Lee, like we're buddies or something."

Lee frowns a little, covering it with the bottle. The two of them got to be something like friends, comrades at least, in those long months in orbit around New Caprica, but buddies...no. That kind of casual, easy friendship has never been something Lee quite understands or is able to forge.

"Whatever," he says finally, putting the bottle down and squaring off at the bag again. Helo steps back to support it and Lee takes his first punch. "I mean, it’s just you, me, and the bag, right?"

"Right." A few minutes pass in silence except for the rasp of Lee's breath, the smack of his fists against the canvas, the low grunts from one or the other of them at impact. "So, you're trying to make the Viper cuts, I take it?"

"Been talking to my dad again?"

"That's sort of my job."

"Tigh's job now, isn't it?"

Something flickers across Helo's face, something like a warning, and Lee miffs the next punch, his knuckles scraping ineffectively across the surface of the bag. "That's still...in transition."

"He can't do it." It's strange to say out loud, and it's probably not quite on the books to speak so freely about this, but frak it. He's the one who just suspended rank down here. "The Admiral's kidding himself."

"I don't have an opinion on that." Helo is so _frakking_ blank and neutral that Lee has to laugh out loud, stepping back from the bag again.

"Yeah, you do," he says, shaking his head as Helo lets the bag swing free and then smacks it with the flat of his hand, not playfully anymore. "But I get it, you can't say so."

Helo glances at him, then at the unbalanced swing of the bag. "I was damn good at that job."

"Yeah." Lee nods and runs his hand back through his hair, the strands heavy with sweat against his fingers. "So was I."

Helo exhales slowly and shakes his head. "Hell of a thing"

"Yeah." Lee has to laugh at that, at the way he has nothing but that one word to sum up the whole universe that keeps spinning on without his input or consent. "Let's hit the shower. I'm done for today."

"Thought you wanted back in your Viper."

"I do."

Helo steps behind the bag again, catching it and bringing it still, bracing it against his weight. "Then go another frakking round, Major. Viper regs are tough. Can't half-ass it."

"If you ask my father," Lee says dryly, stepping up to the bag and squaring off again, "there is nothing half about my ass these days."

Helo laughs out loud. "Yeah, well, what does the old man know anyway?"  
***  
Lee used to run these laps with Starbuck. Matching Helo's strides is harder, but that's the whole point, isn't it?

"Three fights yesterday," Helo says, swerving around a pair of deck hands tearing back a panel. "Two between pilots, one in the tent city on the deck."

"Need to clear those people out." Lee nods to Dee and Hoshi as they pass, smiling despite himself at his wife's encouraging catcall. She seems about as amused by this fitness crash-course as she is proud, but at least she's not on the same motivational program as the Admiral. "Prove the bastards wrong" only works for a limited number of bastards. "Chief said there was an accident with an air compressor yesterday, some kid almost got brained."

"We're putting more security up." They hit the halfway point in their circuit, and Helo drops back to the wall to stretch. "But yeah. We need to find room on the other ships. Galactica's not a motel."

"If it is, the room service stinks." Lee huffs a laugh and braces a hand against the wall while he stretches his quadricep. His muscles ache, but it's a good burn, the one that means they're tearing and growing and rebuilding themselves again. "So, pilots are fighting, huh?"

"We need to figure out the new mix." Helo shakes his head. "Blending two crews, bringing back the ones who went down planetside...it's a frakking mess."

"The Admiral's making me CAG again, assuming I re-certify tomorrow."

Helo tugs the hem of his shirt up to wipe his mouth, not quite hiding his grin. "That just means you have to remember not to run the bird into the ship when you try to land, right?"

"More or less." Lee bounces experimentally onto his toes; his muscles loosen obediently, ready to go again. "And hope Kat doesn't knife me in my sleep."

"Don't worry, Dee will protect you." Helo dodges Lee's punch and starts off down the corridor again at an easy jog.

"Frak you, Agathon."

"All talk, all talk, come and get me."  
***  
"See? Told you you could do it. You did great." Helo stuffs the jump ropes back into the bag and Lee stares into the mirror, catching his breath and watching the ghost he sees do the same. A Lee Adama brought back from the dead without benefit of a resurrection ship.

"Remind me never to let that happen again," he mutters.

"You got it, Slim."

" _Ever_." Helo chuckles and Lee thinks about smacking him, but the Gods know Helo's earned it over these last weeks for putting up with him.

"Now you just have to start logging hours in the cockpit," Helo says, stuffing the bag into the locker and slamming the door. "Kat says you couldn't have hit Galactica broadside today, forget a Raider."

"Kat needs to watch her mouth." That's a reflex, and Lee makes a face as soon as the sharp words are out. "Not that she doesn't have a point. I'll get the flight time."

"Yeah." Helo nods and glances at him carefully. "I mean, you'll have to cover Kara's now, right?"

Anybody else, he'd blow up in their face for that, but Helo knows Kara just about as well as Lee does. Frak, maybe better. Maybe it's impossible to really know her when he's looking through the filter of time and Zak and anger and guilt. So he bites his tongue and shrugs and tosses his bag into his own locker, reaching for his towel. "Yeah."

"Heard she landed the Viper on fumes."

"Yeah."

"That's not actually good for them."

"You're telling me."

"She okay?"

"How the frak should I know? She doesn't talk to me."

"She doesn't talk to anybody anymore."

"Her problem, not mine."

"Well, you're the CAG." Lee looks at him and Helo shrugs. "Right?"

"Yeah." Lee tugs his shorts down and slings the towel over his shoulder. "So I guess it's a little bit my problem. But I've got plenty of pilots to cover the gap. Pilots who don't have attitude problems."

"Aw, c'mon." He can hear Helo grinning even before he looks at him again. "All Viper jocks have attitude problems."

"Yeah, and to get Raptor crews to do anything you need an electric cow prod." The one and only good thing about New Caprica-- it had freshwater stores that let them refill Galactica's reserves. No more shower rations. Lee can't quite help a whimper of relief as he steps under the hot spray. "You in the CIC next shift?"

"Nah, it's my day off." Helo tilts his head back and let the spray run down his face, then ducks his head to breathe. "Supposed to meet Sharon in the rec room."

"Heard the old man's giving her flight status back."

"Yeah." Helo smiles with pure delight and pride, and if they weren't talking about putting a Cylon behind the controls of a military asset, Lee would smile back. "She's really happy."

"I bet."

The buzzer sounds to alert them that one water ration is up, and it's a pleasure to be able to smack the button and take another. "You want to come down to the rec?" Helo asks, glancing at him. "Probably a game of Triad or something going on."

"I actually have a date with my wife." Lee rinses the soap from his hair and indulges in just one more minute of feeling the water pound against his back. "But thanks for the offer."

"A date, huh? A 'meet me back at the rack for fifteen minutes at the start of shift' date?"

"Go to hell, Agathon."

Helo laughs and hits the control to turn the water off. "I'm just asking."

"It's a 'coordinate repair schedules for deck fifteen' date. With lunch." He wraps his towel around his waist, counting off the beats in his head, then looks at Helo and grins. "And we booked ourselves a whole hour, thanks very much."

"Must be nice to have rank."

"Damn right."

"Anyway." Helo heads back to the locker room, raking his fingers through his hair. "Meeting Sharon, then I'm going down to see the old man."

"Thought you said it's your day off."

"These are day-off observations I'd like to share with him."

"Ahh." Lee opens his locker and nods. "Off the books, huh?"

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean, Major."

"I'm sure you don't." One thing he will miss about that year in orbit is that all these little political games were mostly obsolete. "Well, I guess I'll see you in the mess later, then."

"And in the gym tomorrow." He shakes his head at Lee's surprised glance. "No reason to drop a good thing, right? Don't frak with a routine that works."

"Can't argue with that." Lee steps into his trousers. "Tomorrow we're doing laps, right?"

"Frak that. Back to the bench press. Just because you've made Viper cuts doesn't mean you can't add another ten pounds on the bar."

"Frak _that_. I can add fifteen."

Helo grins at him over the locker door, and Lee grins back. "You want to back that up with something, Adama?"

"My word as an officer?"

"Good enough for me."  



End file.
